I think since having become divorced from religion (at least with Christianity, I still find Dharmic spirituality interesting, but I still don’t believe in the supernatural), the idea of death has become a bit more difficult for me.
I tell myself that I am okay with dying, since it’s inevitable, and out of my control, but I think deep down, when I really think about the end of my existence, there is some deep terror there, perhaps related to the fear of the unknown. I can think of all kinds of fantastic quotes about death and finding peace with it, but when I think about what it will feel like to die, it instills great terror within me.
It’s not even a fear of the pain or anything. Just a fear of what may or may not be next. I think part of it too is some sort of fear of missing out. A fear of not getting to see the great things that are to come in this world. A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn. So much to learn, and so little time. I think it also has to do with the thought of being forever separated from my loved ones. From my partner. From the person who I share my life with and have created my life with. Imagining being separated from her for an eternity, it brings me to tears.
Interestingly, this is a fear I’ve always had, ever since I was a child. I remember being 4 or 5 years old and asking my dad what happens after death, what death feels like, where my friends will go after death, and remember him becoming almost frustrated with my questioning, because these are obviously answers he doesn’t have and are honestly fairly strange thoughts for a child so young to be pondering.
For some reason, death has always been something on my mind since I was a child, and a very emotional thought at that. I think my brief stint of being religious from early childhood into mid-teen years was an emotional ‘band-aid’ of sorts, but since I’ve come to the conclusion that I truly don’t know what death will feel like or what will happen after death, these thoughts have again started racing through my head, giving me moderate emotional discomfort.
Have any of yourselves come to term with death? How have you managed to find peace with it besides “just don’t think about it”?
I’ve got a few disjointed thoughts regarding life/death that may help.
Fearing death is a perfectly natural response to living. We have evolved to fear death. It’s there so we strive to live long enough to breed and raise our young. Humans are enlightened beyond only fulfilling our natural instincts but they still linger and this can’t be helped. It’s in our makeup.
They say life is a way for the universe to experience itself. Since you as a human are just one tiny piece of the whole universe, you’re not expected to experience and learn EVERYTHING… Rather you just learn and experience what comes to you naturally which will add to the universes “knowledge pool”.
All matter in the universe has existed since its beginning and will continue to exist until its end. You and all your loved ones are made of this matter. Even in death, your matter still remains in the universe. So while your consciousness might no longer exist, everything that makes up “you” still does… your matter has just rejoined the universe. Your matter shares this space with the master of everyone who has ever existed or who will ever exist. This means you will never be leaving your loved ones behind for eternity, quite the opposite.
I hope some part of my ramblings soothes you somewhat.
Maybe ‘it’s okay to be afraid’ is the answer. Maybe for me, it is that idea of “clinging” to life, and struggling with that. Maybe it is having this image of myself in my head, that when the time comes, I shouldn’t let the emotions overwhelm me, and I should be able to remain stoic and “exit the world with dignity” or something like that.
I have had periods of time where I thought I had come to terms with death, but recently and often I find myself horrified of the concept that I have already died because it is inevitable. I have had periods of time where I came to an understanding of how temporary and fleeting everything is but when I fall in love with the world again I find my fear of death along with it.
I have lost comrades in violent and upsetting ways, sometimes self-inflicted. I have seen death firsthand so many times and I do not feel any better about it. Where I find the strength to go on I also find the fear of having to give up. I do not think I will come to terms with death and I think I will have to live around it.
As for how you can come to terms with death, I’ve been told the solution is to tie up loose ends. I don’t know how this solution can help someone who doesn’t want to leave.
horrified of the concept that I have already died because it is inevitable
I have a similar thought sometimes but it’s the opposite of horrifying. If anything, it makes me feel like I could achieve anything. What could possibly hold me back if it’s all already written? (I don’t want to give the impression that in trying to live as some kind of superhero—I’m talking very much within the realms of living a rather ordinary life.)
I currently don’t care about death. It’s going to happen one day or another.
There’s this guy at my (now old) place of work who manages to live every day as if it was his last. For him this means gambling, smoking, not really giving a shit about a lot of things. And he has so much fun doing it. Whenever someone in our group of friends says something about this, his answer is: ‘tomorrow is a certainty for no one. You don’t know what will happen and you very well may be dead a the end of the day’.
Now, I’m not saying you should be living life like this. Statistically speaking, if you’re young and relatively healthy, there’s a big chance you will live on for a while. Living life like it is your last day may be counterproductive for your life goals. But the longer I watch my friend live like this, the more I understand his vision and his lack of fear about death. You DON’T know what will happen after life or what your next day will bring. One of my coworkers died recently. He had a random seizure, fell and hit his head against the radiator. He was a healthy 21 year old. His parents found him after a few days after they returned from holiday. Life can be taken away very quickly and without warning.
I know this is a pretty white privileged way of thinking. But at the same time I also get so caught up in politics and making the world a better place that I forget to live a little and worry less. I also don’t want to die without having a bit of fun.
So, I don’t fear death. I have up thinking about what will happen if I die and I focus on the here and now more.
From the Buddhist tradition, I’d say you can use meditation practice to realize for yourself that the notion of a coherent self is an illusion, and you are losing nothing in death. I’d suggest you listen to Revolutionary Left Radio and Shoeless in South Dakota, because Breht has a lot of episodes about Buddhism and stuff. He often tells the story of when his spiritual practice led him to have a crisis where he obsessed about the fact he was going to die, but he eventually realized he was just mourning the human condition.
Edit:
A fear of not having the time to learn the innumerable interesting things that there are to learn.
I found that relatable, and I guess I think you can’t regret anything if you don’t exist. I think it’s good to try and learn as much is you can, but what matters is that you try to affect the world in a net positive way. I’m still trapped in the illusion of self, but theoretically with how your consciousness is constantly changing there is no need to regret anything, just be present with experiences as they come, and try to be good, but in the end it won’t matter.
You are not the same person from one moment to the next, nor over your lifetime. Your emotions constantly change; your opinions constantly change; you physically constantly change; what does the little baby you once were have in common with you? Genes? You share 99.9% in common with everyone anyway. There’s also a dialectical approach where you say “where does my body end and other things begin?” Even the atoms don’t technically touch each other so, who’s to say that whatever you are sitting on isn’t a part of “you?” Who’s to say the bacteria on/in you is truely a separate entity when they outnumber you ten to one in cells? Who’s to say the plants around you aren’t part of your respiratory system?
How does change in one’s self based on conditions equate to no coherent self? Surely there’s still a continuity.
This is exactly the kind of mindset I’ve been trying to adopt. Being able to see the deep interconnection in the world and seeing how everything is related in connection and change. Trying to apply it to myself has been difficult. Sometimes it feels like my body/mind fights back against this too, there are times when I’ve felt I’ve made progress on this, but then, somewhere in my brain, for some reason, i feel forced to contemplate specific organs of my body, such as my heart, and how that might feel to go out, and then the anxiety gets going, and then it feels like there’s actually some sharpness in the heart itself, and then I worry about dying and go down that rabbit hole.
coherent self
Is there such thing as an incoherent self? I feel like everything exists except for me, and that “I” am nothing more than an occasionally interrupted stream of sensory input. Especially since I’ve become terminally online and have barely moved, I even feel disconnected from my body and physical surroundings. So much of “my” time is spent online I feel more like a digital ghost than a living thing.
I’m going to put it off for as long as bloody possible! But the idea of dying doesn’t scare me. Perhaps the method. I wouldn’t like it to be drawn out or painful. But I don’t fully understand how anyone can fear death itself. Living for eternity seems scarier. And losing others—that’s another thing entirely.
There’s nothing after, so it doesn’t matter. You won’t be around to regret or ponder it. It doesn’t trouble me to think about death at all. Sometimes I think that I can think this because I’m content that I’m living properly along the way. But then I realise again that even if I died when I wasn’t living properly, to the fullest, I wouldn’t be sentient to care, so even then it wouldn’t matter.
The realisation of what death really is might be the most liberating thought. You’ve got one go at life, it’ll be too brief however long it lasts, so try to make it count and live knowing that your individuality is tangential to being part of history.
